


Nigthmares

by trashbender



Category: Avatar (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashbender/pseuds/trashbender
Summary: Zutara/One-shot: Post-War. Zuko wakes up and find Katara in his room.Or: Zuko and Katara have a talk about feelings.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: ******I do not own Avatar or anything related to it.  
>  **A/N: ******I found something in my folder and it's not complete garbage! I did a little polishing and thought why not share it. So yeah, here's a little thing. I'm not entirely sure about the ending, but oh well.

He sat up abruptly, gasping for air. His hands covered his face as he heaved, sweat trickling down his forehead and back.

“You okay?”

Zuko nearly fell off his bed. He grabbed for the swords he kept by his bed while sweeping the darkness for danger. With his heart beating hard in his chest, he discovered there wasn't an assassin or some ghost-spirit, but something that could be much, much more dangerous in his room: Katara.

“I also get them,” she said, sitting on the windowsill and looking out over the garden. Moonlight illuminated her, making her seem otherworldly. "It usually helps not being alone.”

He sat there speechless for a moment, trying to process what she was saying. When he finally understood what she was talking about, he managed to mutter, “That's why you're in my room in the middle of the night?”

She laughed softly, the sound both pleasant and eerily hollow, as if she wasn't quite there, but somewhere far away. “That,” she said, “and your room has a much better view then mine.”

Okay, he thought. From experience he kept his mouth shut, not knowing what was the right thing to say. Something seemed off about the waterbender. There was an aura of calmness around her that was different from usual, and something... Zuko couldn't quite place it, in fact it was more of a hunch than anything else. Though the fact that she was in his room in the middle of the night, unannounced, was strange in itself.

“Katara,” he said, moving to the end of his bed. “Is everything alright?”

Instead of replying she started to hum. It was a toneless, flat tune. She hummed for awhile, looking at the moon, before finally answering. “Do you ever miss the war?”

He hadn't expected that kind of question, he didn't know how to answer — so he answered honestly. “Sometimes.” Replaying his answer in his mind, he hurriedly added, “I mean, it was just... different, you know. It was sort of—”

“Easier,” Katara finished for him. He swallowed, nodded even though she wasn't looking at him. “A different kind of easy, I guess. We didn't have any real responsibility back then; we were just kids.” Once again she gave that humorless laugh. “We weren't ever really kids though, were we?”

Zuko was standing now, something alike fear settling in his stomach. Katara was acting strange, that much he knew, he just didn't understand why —  or why she'd come to him. “What's going on, Katara?”

Now that he was closer, he could see that her shoulders were shaking ever so slightly. Was she cold? He doubted it. Even if the northern breeze could be quite chilly, Katara never stopped complaining about how ridiculously hot it was here. She might be silently laughing, if not...

“Katara...”

“I remember being scared,” she said, so softly he almost didn't hear. “I was always scared back then, it was always at the back of my mind. Irrational fears, real fears... I thought it would end with the war, but new fears just shows up, you know. I mean, there isn't much to be afraid of, yet...”

He was right beside her now, could easily reach out and touch her. He didn't. Katara wasn't predictable on a good day, and right now was obviously not a good day. Zuko was being careful.

“What are you afraid of now, Katara?”

A sharp intake of breath. “Me.”

Zuko almost took a step back in surprise. Katara, of all people, he would not have expected this from. Peaceful, sweet Katara. He knew she could easily kill him if she wanted to, he knew that anyone with a functioning mind should fear her, but for Katara to fear herself...

“You know what I can do, Zuko,” she said, and for the first time since he woke up, she acknowledged his presence. She turned to him as she confessed, “I didn't use it. I don't use it. It's wrong. It's unnatural. I agree with what they say; what they said. But... but it's a part of me, Zuko. Does that mean there's something wrong with me, too?”

Her eyes seemed bigger than ever, and they were looking up at him with this pleading, with this helplessness he'd never expected to see on her face and it crushed him. Something inside of him broke just a little at seeing her this lost, of seeing her looking at him for some kind of answer.

“There's nothing wrong with you, Katara,” he said, brows furrowed and hands going to squeeze her shoulders. She was cold to touch, so cold it frightened him. “You're one of the best people I know.”

She smiled, but it was a sad kind of smile. “I said I wouldn't use it, and I didn't,” she repeated, “but what if I had?” Before he could say anything, she continued; “What if I could have saved them?”

Again he was taken aback, confused with the turn the conversation had taken. “Saved who...?” Zuko asked.

Her shoulders started to shake again, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don't even know their names... in my dreams, they’re just blurry faces, all of them begging me to save them... I know what Aang and Sokka think about bloodbending, but... but what if I could have helped those people? Maybe it would have been the wrong way, but it must be better then leaving them to die!”

“Katara,” Zuko breathed, “you helped save the world... you did your very best. You haven't done anything wrong.”

“Of course I have,” she whispered. “I’ve made mistakes. You’ve made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes!” She was on the edge of hysteria. “Isn't that what makes us humans? I make mistakes, too! I'm not perfect... I'm...”

When she became silent, Zuko had a growing suspicion that this was about more than just bloodbending. He sat down beside her, taking her trembling hands in his and squeezing. “What's going on, Katara?”

She swallowed and stared at their linked hands. “I might have been... uh, experimenting with what Hama taught me, and I might have been caught...”

“Caught?” Zuko questioned.

“Aang found out. And he wasn't happy. I think he wants me to forget about Hama all together, but I can't.”

“So he was mad? About you experimenting?”

She laughed, and it sounded a little bit more like her usual laugh. “Yes, I guess so. I mean, I understand that he doesn't like it — it is wrong, but at the same time, I understand Hama and why she... did what she did. I just thought that, maybe it could be used differently, or— or something. I don't know, but he didn't let me explain and I just got so mad. Then when I tried to explain it later, he pretended like it never happened.” She looked up at him with sad, blue eyes. “That's when the nightmares began.”

“Because of that?”

Katara shrugged. “I guess it had been building up from before that, it just overflowed. The nightmares started some weeks ago, featuring every mistake I have ever made. It doesn't sound so bad, but... it's worse when the people around you don't understand.”

Zuko was finally understanding, and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. He loved all his friend, but they had flaws, every one of them. Katara had her temper, Sokka his stupidity, Aang his childishness and Toph her rebellion. They were all so different, and that was generally a good thing, but also... difficult. He'd never once thought that Aang and Katara's differences might clash like this. He felt sorry for them both, but he couldn't help being on Katara's side (and not only because she scared him) — Aang wasn't known for looking at the world from different perspectives.

“So you tried to talk to him and...?” Zuko concluded.

“Well,” Katara sighed. “I was planning to talk to him, but I put it off and then I had a nightmare and now I'm freaking out so I came here. Because your room has such a nice view.”

He didn't take the bite. “What was the nightmare about, Katara?”

She squeezed his hand, playing with his fingers. “I broke things off, and — everything became chaos. He disappeared again and the world freaked out because the Avatar was gone and then everyone was blaming me, and... it really was my fault, that's what I thought at least.”

Her hands were shaking again. “You need to be happy, too, Katara. If he loves you, and we all know he does, he will understand.”

“It'll break his heart,” she muttered, voice thick with unshed tears.

“True,” Zuko agreed (receiving a death glare in doing so), “but he will understand, Katara. You're happiness matters just as much as his.”

She snorted. “I'm a peasant, remember. My happiness means nothing compared to the Avatar's.” She was only half meaning it, the rest was all sarcasm and Zuko found himself missing the feisty waterbender that always kept him on his toes.

“Wasn't that why we ended the war?” Zuko mused, a smiling playing on his lips. “To make everyone equal?”

This time she laughed for real. “Right, we ended the war. I forget that sometimes.” She smiled at him, a real smile this time that reached her eyes and made them twinkle in the moonlight. “Thanks, Zuko.”

“I didn't do anything.”

Katara shook her head with the biggest smile on her face. “Cut it, Fire Lord, modesty doesn't suit you.”

“Depression doesn't suit you, Master Katara.”

They didn't go back to sleep, but stayed up until the sun started rising. And if rumours started the next day about the Fire Lord and the Waterbending Master taking a nap together by the turtleduck-pond, the pair realised that they didn't mind it all that much.


End file.
